The old druid was reeling, blood streaming from his nose, barely keeping his feet. Twenty minutes of sustained combat had drained reserves that would have lasted hours in his youth. The captain's enhanced strength flowed through his arms as he brought the cudgel down in a devastating overhand strike.
Hemlock's bark shield exploded like rotted timber. Fragments of wood filled the air. The cudgel's momentum carried through, catching Hemlock's left arm as he desperately tried to deflect. Bone snapped with a wet crack.
The elder druid collapsed to one knee, his useless arm hanging at an unnatural angle. Gray stars danced at the edges of his vision. His staff fell from nerveless fingers.
"Finally," Gregor snarled, raising his weapon for the killing blow. Around him, his remaining mercenaries—common sellswords with crossbows and cheap swords—surged forward, sensing victory. "Kill them all!"
The battle was lost. Hemlock down, Elara overwhelmed, Borin pinned. In seconds, the mercenaries would sweep over them.
The cudgel descended toward Hemlock's skull.
Silver light flashed.
Ben Richards materialized between them, tower shield already in motion. Vanguard's Charge—the forceful shove activating at the perfect moment. The cudgel struck steel with a sound like a cathedral bell, the impact sending shockwaves through the air. Ben's knees bent, absorbing the tremendous force, yet he remained steadfast, refusing to budge an inch.
"Need a hand?" Ben asked over his shoulder, professional calm in his voice.
Hemlock tried to answer but only managed a wet cough, blood speckling his lips.
"Earthen Communion!" Mark Turner's hands slammed into the ground beside the fallen elder. This wasn't an attack; it was emergency triage. Druidic magic flowed through the earth itself, Mark's relatively healthy reserves connecting to Hemlock's failing system. Not healing, but life support. Sharing the mountain's strength to keep vital organs functioning.
"Multiple breaks, internal bleeding," Mark diagnosed with clinical efficiency. "He's in shock. I can keep him stable, but-"
A crossbow bolt sparked off the ground inches from his knee. Regular mercenaries, now freed from the vines, were closing in, trying to finish what they'd started. They lacked professional abilities, but steel was steel.
The four sellswords charged at Mark's exposed position, swords raised. No magical enhancement, just desperate men seeing their last chance at victory.
That's when Celeste made her entrance.
The Arcane Mage stepped forward like winter herself arriving, her elaborate robes pristine despite the mountain trek. Her wand, dragon bone inlaid with silver runes, traced a complex pattern in the air. She took in the battlefield with a single sweeping glance: eleven mercenaries, only six of them actual professionals, the rest common sellswords. Defenders overwhelmed at multiple points.
Time for a lesson in why Lumina Academy produced the continent's most feared battle mages.
"Tempest Spiral."
The spell wasn't a simple wind blast. It was a localized weather system compressed into a twenty-foot radius. The air temperature plummeted as pressure systems collided. Snow and debris lifted from the ground, spinning faster, faster, until a proper cyclone erupted among the mercenary ranks.
The four charging sellswords hit the wind wall and simply vanished into the howling vortex. Their lack of enhanced durability meant nothing against raw elemental fury. The mini-hurricane lifted them like dolls, spinning them helplessly before slamming them into trees, rocks, and each other with bone-breaking force.
One mercenary hit an oak trunk headfirst and slid down, leaving a red smear on the bark. Another's screams cut off as he impacted a boulder at speed.
The spell collapsed after four seconds, leaving devastation in its wake. Where confident mercenaries had pressed their attack, now broken bodies littered the snow.
"Mages!" last remaining sellsword screamed. "Battle mages! We can't fight this!"
"Celeste," Ben called out calmly, keeping an eye on Gregor. "Third tree from the left."
Her wand swiveled with mechanical precision. "Wind Lance."
Where Tempest Spiral was chaos, Wind Lance was surgical. A compressed column of air, no thicker than a spear shaft, punched through the ancient pine's trunk like paper. The last sellsword crouched behind it had just enough time to realize his cover was compromised before the lance continued through him. He dropped without a sound, twin holes in his torso.
"Rapid Shot!" Roric who escaped in the nick of time tried one last technique, his crossbow mechanism spinning to chamber a special bolt. But the Hunter's hands shook now, fear replacing confidence. These weren't mountain villagers. These were killers who made him look like an amateur.
The battlefield psychology flipped in seconds. The regular mercenaries are completely finished. Even the professionals began to waver.
He stood to flee. Borin's arrow, enhanced with True Strike, took him between the shoulder blades before he'd gone three steps.
Alph let himself be driven back until his shoulders hit the wall. Cornered. Chest heaving—genuine fatigue mixed with calculated fear. Every detail had to be perfect. One last desperate attempt—he raised a final ice blade, his whole arm trembling with the effort.
Almost there. Just a little closer.
"Please..." The word came out as barely a whisper.
Valerius moved in for the finishing strike. The boy was done, defeated, nothing more than—
Their weapons met one final time.
Now.
The frostbite erupted like a living thing.
The cold wasn't gradual this time. It struck like a predator, racing up Valerius's blade faster than thought. His fingers went numb instantly—not the gentle chill of winter but the savage bite of absolute zero.
No! Valerius's mind shrieked as Read Intent finally revealed the truth beneath the boy's performance. The exhaustion was real, yes, but underneath—cold calculation, patient control, the mind of someone who'd been three steps ahead the entire fight.
He tried to drop his weapon but his hand wouldn't respond. Ice crystals spread across his skin like living veins, his entire right arm becoming a frozen, useless weight. The nerves died in sequence—fingers, wrist, elbow—each section going dark in his awareness.
A lawyer's first rule, Alph thought with grim satisfaction, stepping inside Valerius's guard. Never reveal your strongest argument until opposing counsel can't object.
Alph drove an ice-covered knee into Valerius's sternum. The Schemer, his legendary Thief agility useless with half his body going numb, crashed backward. His frost-deadened arm hit the floor with a sound like breaking pottery. Where frozen tissue met stone, cracks appeared, blood seeping from the fissures.
"Impossible," Valerius gasped, his remaining hand clutching at his ruined arm. "You're just a Tier 0... I read you perfectly..."
"You read what I wanted you to read," Alph said quietly, standing over the fallen man. The ice blade in his hand gleamed with deeper cold now, no longer hiding its true nature. "Every tell, every sign of weakness—all of it real, just not complete."
Valerius's eyes widened with sudden, terrible understanding. The frostbite pattern, the level of control, the precise manipulation of magical output—no basic Arcane Squire could manage such sophisticated techniques. His mouth opened, perhaps to voice his realization, but Alph's blade was already moving.
Then the blood began to smoke.
The smoke rose in unnatural spirals, thick and crimson. The pooling blood from Valerius's shattered arm began to bubble as if boiling, though no heat touched the air.
Civilians screamed, pressing back against the walls. Even Alph stumbled away, his ice blade raised defensively. This was no magic he recognized.
The blood pool expanded impossibly, defying physics as it spread across the floor. Then, from its center, fingers emerged—pale as bone, dripping red. An arm followed, then shoulders, then a face twisted in ecstatic madness.
Lyra pulled herself from the blood like a swimmer from a lake, her dark robes somehow pristine despite her emergence. Her eyes were wild, unfocused, pupils dilated until only thin rings of color remained. Power crackled around her—not the clean force of traditional magic, but something raw and wrong.
"So much life," she whispered, her voice sing-song and broken. "So much beautiful, warm life. I can taste it all."
Her mad gaze swept the room, passing over the cowering families, the frozen Valerius, settling finally on the corner where Alph's friends huddled. Her smile widened, showing teeth stained pink.
"There," she breathed. "The wounded one. His pain sings so sweetly."
Dark magic coalesced around her fingers, forming into a bolt of condensed blood and shadow. Finn, still favoring his injured ankle, couldn't move fast enough.
"No!" Alph started forward but he was too far away, the distance impossible to cross in time.
The blood-bolt launched.
Kael saw it coming. He grabbed Finn's shoulders and shoved hard, putting all his strength into pushing his friend clear. The motion carried him forward—directly into the spell's path. There was no time to dodge, no chance to retreat. The momentum of saving Finn had sealed his fate.
The magic tore through his chest like paper.
Kael looked down at the hole in his chest, confusion flickering across his face. He opened his mouth, perhaps to speak, but only blood came out. His legs gave way.
"Kael!" Finn's scream tore through the hall.
The world went still for Alph. He saw Kael falling, saw Astrid's hands fly to her mouth in horror, saw Emil pressing back against the wall. But most of all, he saw his friend—the boy who'd laughed about fighting moss, who'd drunk bitter soup just to keep him company, who'd been there since his first confused days in this world—crumpling to the floor.
Kael's eyes found Alph's across the room. He tried to smile, that same easy grin that had welcomed a confused stranger. Then the light faded.
Gregor snarled, activating Berserker's Fury. The Fighter ability flooded his system with artificial rage, increasing strength and speed at the cost of defense. Red veins bulged in his neck as he hammered at Ben's shield with newfound violence.
"Heavy Guard!" Ben's defensive technique turned his shield into an immovable object, distributing impact across his entire body rather than just his arm. Each of Gregor's enhanced blows dented steel but couldn't break through.
The two Thieves tried to flank Ben while he was engaged with Gregor. "Twin Strike!" They moved in perfect synchronization, poisoned blades seeking gaps in his armor.
But Ben had fought paired rogues before. "Defensive Stance!" His whole body became a fortress, shield and armor working in perfect harmony. The Thieves' blades scraped harmlessly off steel.
The surviving Fighters from the Treant battle tried to help Gregor, but Mark's voice rang out. "Entangling Roots!"
Vines erupted from the earth, wrapping around the Fighters legs. They had the strength to break them eventually, but it bought precious seconds.
Even Iska, wounded but not broken, brought down the thief with savage efficiency. The wolf's natural hunting instincts guided her to the hamstring, and he went down shrieking.
Last Thief tried Smoke Bomb, hurling a small sphere that exploded into thick black clouds. But Mark simply commanded the earth beneath the smoke. "Grasping Vines!" The plants erupted upward, guided by tremor sense rather than sight. The Thief's scream told everyone the spell had found its mark.
Gregor finally understood he stood alone. His Berserker's Fury was fading, leaving exhaustion in its wake. The other Fighter was entangled. Both Thieves were down. Roric was dead. The regular sellswords had fled or surrendered.
He tried to disengage, but Ben had been waiting for it. The moment Gregor's weight shifted backward, the shield fighter activated Shield Bash. The ability turned defense into offense, his shield's edge striking with the force of a war hammer.
The blow caught Gregor in the solar plexus, folding him in half. As the captain gasped for air, Ben's Stunning Strike—an open-palm blow enhanced with kinetic force—connected with his jaw.
Gregor's head snapped back, eyes rolling white. He managed one stumbling step before Ben's pommel strike to the temple dropped him like a felled tree.
The captain crumpled into the blood-stained snow, finally silent.